Antineutrino sensitivity at THEIA
Abstract
We present the sensitivity of the Theia experiment to low-energy geo- and reactor antineutrinos. For this study, we consider one of the possible proposed designs, a 17.8-ktonne fiducial volume Theia-25 detector filled with water-based liquid scintillator placed at Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). We demonstrate Theia's sensitivity to measure the geo- and reactor antineutrinos via Inverse-Beta Decay interactions after one year of data taking with free target protons. The expected number of detected geo- and reactor antineutrinos is and , respectively. The precision of the fitting procedure has been evaluated to be 6.72% and 8.55% for geo- and reactor antineutrinos, respectively. We also demonstrate the sensitivity towards fitting individual Th and U contributions, with best fit values of and . We obtain after one year of data taking, and within ten years, the relative precision of the (Th/U) mass ratio will be reduced to 15%. Finally, from the fit results of individual Th and U contributions, we evaluate the mantle signal to be NIU. This was obtained assuming a full-range positive correlation () between Th and U, and the projected uncertainties on the crust contributions of 8.3% (Th) and 7.0% (U). When considering systematic uncertainties on the signal and background shape and fluxes, the mantle signal becomes NIU.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2204.12278,
title = {Antineutrino sensitivity at THEIA},
author = {Stephane Zsoldos and Zara Bagdasarian and Gabriel D. Orebi Gann and Andrew Barna and Stephen Dye},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.12278},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
15 pages, 10 figures, submitted to European Physical Journal C